Subscribing to Helpful Public Calendars

That’s why I like subscribing to public Google calendars. With a click of a button I can subscribe to useful calendars like US holidays and my son’s school schedule.

Shared public calendars show up in my iCal program just like any other calendar. If you’re on a PC don’t worry – you can take advantage of public calendars too.

There are a couple ways to get started. Let’s begin with Google.

Google’s Calendar Library

Google sure doesn’t make it easy to find their public calendar library. It didn’t even turn up on a Google search for “Google public calendars”. (Google….?)

To find it, log in to Google Calendars (create a free account if you don’t already have one) and then click the tiny arrow to the right of “Other calendars” in the sidebar. Then choose “Browse Interesting Calendars”.

Here you’ll find a long list of holidays (Christian, Jewish, Voodoo, etc.), major sports schedules, even phases of the moon.

One calendar I subscribe to is the Eagle’s football schedule. Not because I watch football but because I’ve learned that scheduling anything on game day creates conflict with, ahem, other members of the family.

Let’s continue.

Broadcast Your Own Calendar

Google isn’t the only publisher of public calendars. Anyone can create a Google calendar and make it public. My son’s school, for example, maintains a public Google calendar which is available on their website.

This is a great option for clubs, non-profits, and small businesses, as Google calendar is free and it looks good embedded into a website.

All I have to do is click this little button: at the bottom right of the calendar and I’m prompted to accept the subscription. In calendar settings assign a color and opt to automatically refresh anywhere from every five minutes to once a week.

Something for Everyone at iCalShare

iCalShare is the largest calendar sharing resource on the web. There are over 4,000 calendars available here in categories like local events, news, history, and more – literally something for everyone. iCalShare works with Windows, Mac, Linux, and iOS.

5 Comments

Craig

Just click on ‘show url’, then scroll back up to the top and click ‘add to google calendar’, tthen in the automatically opened google calendar (if you are using a signed-in Chrome browser) click ‘yes, add this calendar’.

Select the calendar, press Subscribe … and then the calendar is added to iCal (with confirmation). Note that this way of subscribing works only with local calendar applications, i.e. not Google Calendar.